In a cellular system, to expand a capacity and a coverage scope of a hotspot area, a concept of a heterogeneous network is introduced. In the heterogeneous network, a macro base station is responsible for coverage of a wide scope, and a low power node (LPN) or a micro base station is adopted to cover a hotspot area. The micro base station has a small coverage scope, and users often change, thereby causing that a state in which UE is not served for a relatively long time. In this case, the micro base station is usually disabled, that is, most energy-consuming elements of the micro base station are disabled, so that power can be reduced and interference to a neighboring cell can be reduced.
In the prior art, the micro base station is in a sleep state after being disabled, periodic sending of a discovery pilot (Discovery Reference Signal, DRS) signal is usually adopted, so that when a user approaches the coverage scope of the micro base station, the DRS signal can be detected by user equipment (UE), and the UE determines signal strength of the micro base station by using the DRS signal.
However, because the DRS signal is a sparse synchronization signal in a time domain, and a time period is in seconds or longer, two situations occur: The first one is that a signal of a neighboring micro base station is not strong enough, but a location at which the DRS signal is located is at a crest of a fast fading channel, so that the UE incorrectly determines that the signal of the micro base station can serve the UE itself; the second one is that the signal of the neighboring micro base station is strong enough, but the location at which the DRS signal is located is at a trough of the channel, so that the UE considers that the signal of the micro base station is not strong enough to serve the UE itself.